Editors note: Chromaticity experts will address questions from the pressroom, plate room, prepress, workflow, proofing, digital photography and color management. Submit a question by going to www.chroma-tech.com and choosing the trial question option. Please make sure to note that you are submitting a question for Newspapers & Technology.

Q: We are a small newspaper using an inexpensive retail two-megapixel camera for black-and-white image capture. Should we shoot the images using the black-and-white setting in the camera or should we capture the images in color and convert them in Adobe Photoshop? I am not sure we can trust the accuracy of the black-and-white images off the camera since they are intended for newsprint. Any suggestions?

— Anonymous

A: Good question. Shooting black-and-white would be better since the file sizes would be smaller, which would allow more images to be stored in the camera and they would transfer more quickly to the computer. Shooting black-and-white will also give you a better quality original image.

This black-and-white image will reproduce fine in newsprint if compensation for dot gain is allowed for in Photoshop. This compensation could easily be accomplished by creating a preset in either the Photoshop levels or curves adjustments. If you do not know how much of an adjustment is required for dot gain, you may want to experiment. If your images print too dark then simply reduce the overall curves to varied degrees until the images print with better tonality. These presets could then be turned into a Photoshop action to semi-automate the procedure. The action could even be used as a batch process via Photoshop’s automation feature.

The only benefit to shooting color over black-and-white is the ability to repurpose the file for color at a later date. In this scenario you will open the RGB images in Photoshop and assign an RGB working space. If you have a calibrated and profiled monitor, I would suggest switching between the AdobeRGB (1998), sRGB and ColorMatch ICC profiles in Photoshop, looking at color quality on your display to find which profile works best for you. You can then convert this image to a grayscale ICC profile based upon your actual newsprint conditions.

Many profiling packages on the market today will allow you to create a grayscale ICC profile from the CMYK profile of your newsprint press. This process will automatically compensate for your press dot gain as described above when you convert from RGB to grayscale.

This process takes more work to set up, will result in larger files on your camera card and require you to archive the RGB and grayscale images for repurposing later, but the actual production work will be simple and yield great results in the paper.

Rick Lucas - rlucas@chromaticity.com